PeTA Launches a porn site

PeTA is the gift that you wish you could regift or donate. In yet another stunning display of lowering the bar yet again, PeTA has decided to launch a porn site.

PETA plans to register itself to operate the www.peta.xxx Web site.

“We are preparing to launch our own peta.xxx site, but instead of just showing people our iconic ads we then show them how animals suffer for entertainment,” said spokeswoman Ashley Byrne, according to the Herald Sun.

“Our racier actions are sometimes a way to get people to sit up and pay attention to the plight of animals,” she said.

Internet surfers who visit the x-rated site will initially be presented with animal rights groups too salacious for TV ads and campaigns. However, the sexy side of PETA, illustrated in its galleries and videos will give way to the horrific mistreatment of animals on factory farms, with pictures and video shot undercover by the group’s hidden camera investigations.

It will have enough adult content to qualify for the XXX domain site but also some other graphic images of animals that viewers may not expect to see.

“We live in a 24 hour news cycle world and we learn the racy things we do are sometimes the most effective way that we can reach particular individuals,” PETA spokeswoman, Lindsay Rajt, told Huffington Post. (source)

Well I suppose the good thing is that by launching a porn site, that PeTA can no longer claim that they aren’t exploiting women, except that they then turn around and justify it for the sake of saving animals. Uh huh. Look, I am not one of those women that is anti porn. I recognize that for some, this is a job like any other and that feminist porn makes a point of producing porn that is not told from the point of view of the male gaze. However, PeTA’s continual use of women, does nothing but reduce women to pieces of meat and I completely fail to see the agency in this supposed choice.
The claim that the bait and switch situation that they continually set up, introduces more people to their message. In this case, it’s come for the porn and stay for the three legged cow being tortured. We all know that the moment the cow enters the situation, viewers are going to look away because what they want to see is the exploitation of women and not animals.

This bait and switch routine that PeTA likes to play only serves to anger those who might be sympathetic to their cause, because the fact that they continually place animals above marginalized people is not only insulting, it aids in the continued institutionalized isms that we face. Charges of specism for making this point are further proof of PeTA followers failing to see how they are either complicit or actively oppressing marginalized people. You cannot ever place the welfare of an animal over and above the welfare of a human being.

It galls me when I see people I respect touting PeTA. I understand the desire to advocate against animal cruelty, but PeTA’s continual assault on marginalized people makes me wonder how they can support this organization? It’s not as if these campaigns are not highly visible. It particularly bothers me when the person doing the support is a member of a marginalized group. One of my fav singers of all time is K.D. Lang, and she supports PeTA. I have often wondered if she is aware of PeTA’s lesbophobic activities.

Marginalizes people are then held up by PeTA as proof that what they are doing is not harmful. When PeTA is accused of exploiting and marginalizing women, we are told that it us who has no respect for women’s agency, because they chose to appear in these PeTA campaigns. You know, there is a sell out in every group, and just because a few people cannot see what is directly in front of their face, does not mean that what PeTA is doing is not harmful. Not all porn is bad, but what PeTA is doing, definitely is.